Improving Human-Reviews Interaction: A Study of the Role, Use, and Place of Online Reviews

The use and benefits of online reviews are undeniable, yet the interaction means available for buyers when consulting reviews remain limited. This study aims to provide a better understanding of the role and use of online reviews, presenting a set of design ideas for designing user interfaces that better support online buyers in consulting reviews. Drawing on interviews with active online review users, we describe the main role reviews play in their purchase decisions online and offline, the strategies they use for making sense of the ever growing number of reviews, and the characteristics they associate with a usable online review. We present the relevant characteristics of a reviewer’s portrait, and identify the role online reviews play in the broader landscape of e-commerce together with other similar tools such as forums or product specifications.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Claudia Iacob

Shamal Faily

Conference

Publication date: July 2016

Publication date (Print): July 2016

Pages: 1-11

Affiliations

[0001]University of Portsmouth

Portsmouth, UK

[0002]Bournemouth University

Poole, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2016.21

SO-VID: c8e7cba6-d1c8-45c9-882a-4cc27f41089a

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 30th International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 30

Conference location: Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

Conference date: 11 - 15 July 2016

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Fusion

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2016.21

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

REFERENCES

BBC News 2015 Online reviews used as blackmail http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33184207
P. Chatterjee 2001 Online Reviews: Do Consumers Use Them? ACR 2001 Proceedings 129 134 Association for Consumer Research
L. ChenG. ChenF. Wang 2015 Recommender systems based on user reviews: the state of the art User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 25 2 99 154
K. Dohse 2013 Fabricating Feedback: Blurring the Lines Between Brand Management and Bogus Reviews Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 2013 363 392
C. FormanA. GhoseB. Wiesenfeld 2006 Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets Information Systems Research
U. GretzelK. H. YooM. Purifoy 2007 Online travel review study: Role and impact of online travel reviews Technical report, Texas A & M University. Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences. Laboratory for Intelligent Systems in Tourism
S. HedegaardJ. G. Simonsen 2013 Extracting usability and user experience information from online user reviews Proceedings ofthe SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ’13 2089 2098 ACM
N. HuL. LiuJ. J. Zhang 2008 Do online reviews affect product sales? the role of reviewer characteristics and temporal effects Inf. Technol. and Management 9 3 201 214
A. H. HuangK. ChenD. C. YenT. P Tran 2015 A study of factors that contribute to online review helpfulness Computers in Human Behavior 48 17 27
C. IacobR. HarrisonS. Faily 2013 Online Reviews as First Class Artifacts in Mobile App Development Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services (MobCASE) 47 53 Springer
H. JinT. SakaiK. Yatani 2014 Reviewcollage: A mobile interface for direct comparison using online reviews Proceedings ofthe 16th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services MobileHCI ’14 349 358 ACM
J. S. KangP KuznetsovaM. LucaY. Choi 2013 Where not to eat? improving public policy by predicting hygiene inspections using online reviews Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing 1443 1448
J. LeeD.-H. ParkI. Han 2008 The effect of negative online consumer reviews on product attitude: An information processing view Electron. Commer. Rec. Appl 7 3 341 352
J. Leskovec 2016 Web data: Amazon Reviews https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web-Amazon.html
M. Luca 2011 Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.Com Technical report, Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 12-016
S. M. MudambiD. Schuff 2010 What makes a helpful online review? a study of customer reviews on amazon.com MIS Q 34 1 185 200
TripAdvisor LLC 2016 Fact Sheet https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/PressCenter-c4-Fact_Sheet.html
I. E. VermeulenD. Seegers 2009 Tried and tested: The impact of online hotel reviews on consumer consideration Tourism Management 30 1 123 127
Q. YeR. LawB. Gu 2009 The impact of online user reviews on hotel room sales International Journal of Hospitality Management 28 1 180 182
C. W. YooG. L. SandersJ. Moon 2013 Exploring the effect of e-WOM participation on e-Loyalty in e-commerce Decision Support Systems 55 3 669 678
K.-H. YooU. Gretzel 2011 Influence of personality on travel-related consumer-generated media creation Comput. Hum. Behav 27 2 609 621

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] BBC News 2015 Online reviews used as blackmail http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33184207

[2] P. Chatterjee 2001 Online Reviews: Do Consumers Use Them? ACR 2001 Proceedings 129 134 Association for Consumer Research

[3] L. ChenG. ChenF. Wang 2015 Recommender systems based on user reviews: the state of the art User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 25 2 99 154

[4] K. Dohse 2013 Fabricating Feedback: Blurring the Lines Between Brand Management and Bogus Reviews Journal of Law, Technology & Policy 2013 363 392

[5] C. FormanA. GhoseB. Wiesenfeld 2006 Examining the Relationship Between Reviews and Sales: The Role of Reviewer Identity Disclosure in Electronic Markets Information Systems Research

[6] U. GretzelK. H. YooM. Purifoy 2007 Online travel review study: Role and impact of online travel reviews Technical report, Texas A & M University. Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences. Laboratory for Intelligent Systems in Tourism

[7] S. HedegaardJ. G. Simonsen 2013 Extracting usability and user experience information from online user reviews Proceedings ofthe SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI ’13 2089 2098 ACM

[8] N. HuL. LiuJ. J. Zhang 2008 Do online reviews affect product sales? the role of reviewer characteristics and temporal effects Inf. Technol. and Management 9 3 201 214

[9] A. H. HuangK. ChenD. C. YenT. P Tran 2015 A study of factors that contribute to online review helpfulness Computers in Human Behavior 48 17 27

[10] C. IacobR. HarrisonS. Faily 2013 Online Reviews as First Class Artifacts in Mobile App Development Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Mobile Computing, Applications, and Services (MobCASE) 47 53 Springer

[11] H. JinT. SakaiK. Yatani 2014 Reviewcollage: A mobile interface for direct comparison using online reviews Proceedings ofthe 16th International Conference on Human-computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services MobileHCI ’14 349 358 ACM

[12] J. S. KangP KuznetsovaM. LucaY. Choi 2013 Where not to eat? improving public policy by predicting hygiene inspections using online reviews Proceedings of the 2013 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing 1443 1448

[13] J. LeeD.-H. ParkI. Han 2008 The effect of negative online consumer reviews on product attitude: An information processing view Electron. Commer. Rec. Appl 7 3 341 352

[14] J. Leskovec 2016 Web data: Amazon Reviews https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web-Amazon.html

[15] M. Luca 2011 Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.Com Technical report, Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 12-016

[16] S. M. MudambiD. Schuff 2010 What makes a helpful online review? a study of customer reviews on amazon.com MIS Q 34 1 185 200

[17] TripAdvisor LLC 2016 Fact Sheet https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/PressCenter-c4-Fact_Sheet.html

[18] I. E. VermeulenD. Seegers 2009 Tried and tested: The impact of online hotel reviews on consumer consideration Tourism Management 30 1 123 127

[19] Q. YeR. LawB. Gu 2009 The impact of online user reviews on hotel room sales International Journal of Hospitality Management 28 1 180 182

[20] C. W. YooG. L. SandersJ. Moon 2013 Exploring the effect of e-WOM participation on e-Loyalty in e-commerce Decision Support Systems 55 3 669 678

[21] K.-H. YooU. Gretzel 2011 Influence of personality on travel-related consumer-generated media creation Comput. Hum. Behav 27 2 609 621

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